[2.3] Flawless Combatant Melee Concept Build (Read Disclaimer!)

INTRODUCTION/DISCLAIMER
Hi! Welcome to my Flawless Combatant concept build! Before I get into my concept there are some very important facts you should know:

I am a total newbie to Path of Exile. I haven't even completed Cruel Act 3. I play in Hardcore Prophecy and my noobness has already sent many exiles to their graves. I wanted to try creating my own build to 1) help learn the game more, 2) see if I could create a viable (as in make it to endgame) build utilizing a playstyle I enjoy, 3) get feedback from the community on my idea, and 4) learn from the mistakes in my build.

I have not played this build yet. I suck at this game. I can't promise that this build can even kill normal Brutus (edit: confirmed Brutus kill :P), let alone Uber Labs and other endgame shenanigans. As I play this build and receive feedback, I will make updates and try to make it as close to a viable build as I can.

CONCEPT/GOAL OF BUILD


PROPOSED SKILL TREE


PLANNED SKILL GEM LAYOUT


GEAR


BANDITS


POTENTIAL ISSUES


CONCLUSION
I hope you enjoyed my concept guide! I'd love feedback, especially from experienced players. Especially if there's some fatal flaw to my build that is sure to doom me! I will do my best to keep the guide updated as I test it out and receive comments. The hope is eventually this will be a full fledged proven guide. While I doubt it will be any sort of leaderboard ranking monster, I hope it can become a viable and fun build.

RESERVED

first thing i have to mention is pure evasion melee is totally different then playing other types of builds. if you want to do, most/all hard map mods and bosses with pure eva melee you have to ready about all kind of shitty situations...

for defensive part,

- id recommend getting coil as first option for physical incoming damage migitation, kintsugi is cool option for range chars but if u go yolo melee 1 vs 1 fights coil shines over kitsugi

- blasphemy + enfeeble is really super duper strong on eva melee chars, i tested and its really awesome

- blind, reduces mobs hit chance by %50 which is huge if you pair it with enfeeble

- like all most claw dagger swords users, you hardly move around but whirling blade away most of the times, where arctic armour says hello with %13 LESS dmg taken from phys attacks and spells, also there is helm enchant with %36 arctic armour effect which is cheap and one of most effective helm enchant you get.. with lvl 21 arctic armor maybe baby empower + helm enchant you take %20-22 LESS dmg taken from phys hits.. id consider as strong option..

- going high *+%50* block and spell blocks is also adds huge survivablity, which is hard to get as dual wielder, but with bringer of rain and %dual wield block chance craft on weps from vagan, you can pretty much achieve %40-50 block chance with ranger*easy with gladiator tho*

- you said , you wanna use reave, lacerate for dual wielding i tested both and lacerate is stronger if you go dual swords without idiotic deaths hand and such wombo combos.. tooltip gonna be lower than reave but real dmg output is superior so far. and these skills are not pure melee skills which you can keep distance and spam abit far away if needed.. but dont forget you are still melee and has to close to gap with mobs, i wouldnt count moving manually dodging is super good option with melee skills. as an example, i have lvl 90 deadeye dual crit sword spectral throw char in prophecy, running 4.5k hp with 80k dps phys-light-cold dmg mix grill, i generally finish maps with just taking 1 or max 5 hits, inculding boss fights. but i am fucking range with 1 million aspeed, bleed on hit crafted rapier dealing tons of dmg as range with 72 blades on hit per second with gmp and vaal pact. i can manually dodge entire world with decent ping... BUT you are still melee, i would never ever count manualy dodging as melee char..

- dodge and spell dodge are super strong, they are not even funny.. esp if you combine new quartz flask*my fav* you can hit 50 dodge 40 spell dodge kinda permamently on crit char with primal spirit + drudic rite + flask modded belt.. thats what i am doing...

***vaal grace + inc duration+ quartz flask cheeze*** this is pure orgasmic cheeze for acro phase acro chars, manuplating the odds of dodging hell yeah.. %75 dodge and %75 spell dodge around 10-12 secs..i generally carry 2 vaal grace setup instead of vaal haste considering i have flash aspeed with most dex based chars.. vaal grace + quartz flask cheeze makes most boss fights joke with decent dps output.. how many boss in this game exists lasts more than 10 secs with decent dmg output??? only bosses which has phases, rest dies before 10-20 sec vaal grace period.

- vaal pact, i am huge fan of vaal pact on high dmg output chars or wanna go facetank melee builds which offers strong survive option aswell.. beware, vaal pact chars*esp hp variant ones* will have super hard time on map trials and sometimes uber lab traps... only downside i see.. also vaal pact + bloodrage is hard to overcome but super doable with fast playstyle..

- also high evasion helps nothing to mention but evasion works with entropy mechanics you have to be prepared for attacks which will fucks your luck.

- enduring cry, gives true damage reduction and cant be piercable like armour.. having 4-5 enduring cry charges with some other defensive options i mentioned above gives huuuge survivablity..

**cwdt+icall+inc duration** this is also classic option with most armor lacking chars adds some significant survivablity to chars

- chaos golem, gives %4 true damage reduction aswell, there is helm enchant with %100 chaos golem bufg which nets you %8 true damage reduction.. imagine you have %8 dr from golem, %12 from 3 end cry charges, it nets you %20 true physical migitation which eva melee chars will love so much.

- keeping fortify up most/all the time, reducing all incoming damage by %20. and it has also melee dmg buff too.. ohh boy this is awesome addition to game..

- flasks!! i am flask junkie in poe, rolling GG perfect flask, building around them, carrying usefull flask in my inventory and change them for map mods and vs bosses.. flasks adds so gg survivablity and dps boost when needed.. ->
sometimes, flasks offers you the things you generally cant handle by your char and turn them into ez pz cake mod.. basalt flask is best addition in game for eva melee chars for example, you go minus max crema map? !!**roll ruby flask with stun recovery*you will %100 get stunned in this map mod vs boss* 1 flask with life leech to boos your leech, run arctic armour and purity of fire, if you use 1 hand shield combo go for saffels, carry saffels on 2nd wep slot.
you wanna tank hard hitter phys dmg boss? like village ruin? pop your stibnite flask and reduce their hit chance etc etc

- some hp pool, well i wrote it last. unlike %95 of part community i dont think high hp pool is something to be considered as first.. it comes last to me.. prep your char to incoming dmg, increase your effective pool is always better option. more hp pool just makes things certain at the last phase of poe.



for offensive part, well i am the guy who can talk about min maxing dmg in poe about days and months but i wont do that now.. if you have dps issues we can discuss later.. but 1 thing to say is, if you go dual sword without crit = you are doing it wrong boy... %30-50 crit multi implicit weapon, you are close to twin terrors, tons of gg crit nodes are nearby and fatal&brutal blade etc..i dont think offense will be problem anyway but feel free to msg ask any problems to me.


potential issues,

1- swords are stronger than daggers right now with the right tree , itemization and playstyle.. go crit sword and lvl with them np/crafting bleed on hit on swords are so strong!/

2- int requirements, this is not an issue or problem by any means in poe these days, go for eva&es boots +30-50 int life dual resist, since you wont need movement speed from boots they are cheap as fuck..
here is my boots got em for 1 chaos ez pz,

got agate amulets , lapis amulets, rings with int, eva es helms gloves can roll int too, you can get jools with int, 30 int node on tree is not a waste for 1point and removing pressure while gearing&lvling..

3- well map mods are problem right ? why i play this game is, to solve my problems and min maxing perfectising the build for me.. i am %10000000 prep'd for any map mods in this game with my chars, lets look at some examples;

you cant leech map mod? -> run poachers mark , use life gain on hit jool
phys refl ? -> run arctic armour + grace , use jade + basalt + stibnite flask

these kind of map mods on red maps are there to scare you, prep yourself better and dont give a fuck. simple as it is.

4- is it too squishy? there is no exact answer for this..

5- mana problems? on dual wield phys dmg dealer char? %0.2 mana leech is all you need, can roll on gloves, rings amulets, weps, you can get jool with mana leech, mana gain on hit on items,jools etc.. mind drinker node on shadow area, duelist leech nodes, ranger already has awesome leech node.. this is the easiest problem to solve np.

finally, i dont like raider a lot, since most her buffs are temporary and special to her. you cant trigger onslaught of ranger with flask, same goes for phasing.. frenzy gives more dmg, ok we love it, but if you gonna generate frenzy chargs with bloodrage*which needs kills*, or raider frenzy gain*which needs kills* is super duper MEH to me.. i want to kill daresso , arena fight ! no mobs around to get flask chargs, no frenzy.. with raider you have to have min 3link frenzy on your items. it all comes to personal preference i guess, i tried melee raider and it was solid but i find her subclass nodes weak compare to other ones.. maybe she is the most balanced one others are broken dont know :D

giant wall of text again bro, hope it helps

cheers Stoya

Thanks a lot for the reply! You've given me a lot to consider with gearing/gemming this build. The Arctic Armor seems really strong. I'm hoping I can get to Cruel difficulty tomorrow so I can test different gem combos and start to see what works best. Bummer about Raider not being too strong. I think I'll still roll with it though since the abilities seem fun to me. Deadeye seems too focused on ranged and Pathfinder just seems boring. If I were to build it a different way I'd probably go Duelist Gladiator but something about the Ranger appeals to me.

Fixed issue with skill tree link, added starter tree, the skills I'm using now, and some starter weapons.

After one unfortunate and preventable death, I moved to prophecy softcore so I could get a chance to see this build to endgame without my own inexperience forcing me to restart. This meant starting the build completely fresh since all my currency was on hardcore. Luckily the leveling uniques for this build are extremely cheap where I could load myself out for just a couple orbs of alchemy and other common currency.

I'm level 42 finishing up a4 of normal and normal lab already done. No deaths yet (a little bit of regret for ditching hc now) and the build is a blast to play. It's extremely fast with already 100%+ increased attack speed and 40%+ increased movement speed. Life leech quickly recovers any life lost so it's mostly about avoiding the big hits which so far is easy with the movement speed.

Next update hopefully I'll be into merciless and I'll be able to add some more substantial updates to the guide. At the very least the early levels are a blast.

Feelgod why do you say swords are better than daggers right now? Just curious because I would love to make a strong sword build. I dabbled with making a full 1h sword build, even now working on a 2H sword build - but damage-wise daggers still seem a bit better and also going all the way up to Acro and getting crit seems to make pathing into daggers more efficient.

-=-----

Hey OP man props for putting out your melee build. I always love seeing new melee Rangers.

You said your goal is to do endgame - what would you like to do with this build? Of course everyone has their different idea of what "endgame" is:

- Getting to level 90-100
- Doing red maps
- Killing T14+ bosses
- Farming Uber Atziri
- Farming Uber lab

Each of these can require different modifications to your build, so it would be good to know how you see it.

Also how set are you on going dualwield?

Problem with dual wield is you lose a lot of defense and the DPS gain is not spectacular IMO. It can still work but puts pressure on life, res, gear and also limits block.

Endgame Ranger melee builds usually require block/dodge uniques to make them work well (because melee Rangers need to either stack dodge or stack block, or both), so going dualwield will put some constraints on what kind of gear you can use.

On top of that they need a solid chest like Kintsugi / Lightning Coil / Daresso / BofR, or Kaom's if 2h sword.

If you really want to do dualwield it could work, but I think you would get better mileage by going:
1) 1H dagger/sword + shield and combining block with dodge
2) 2H sword + Kaom's build focused more on mitigation (grabs Acro, but paths into ECs and runs AA)

"

Ceryneian wrote:

Feelgod why do you say swords are better than daggers right now? Just curious because I would love to make a strong sword build. I dabbled with making a full 1h sword build, even now working on a 2H sword build - but damage-wise daggers still seem a bit better and also going all the way up to Acro and getting crit seems to make pathing into daggers more efficient.

-=-----

Hey OP man props for putting out your melee build. I always love seeing new melee Rangers.

You said your goal is to do endgame - what would you like to do with this build? Of course everyone has their different idea of what "endgame" is:

- Getting to level 90-100
- Doing red maps
- Killing T14+ bosses
- Farming Uber Atziri
- Farming Uber lab

Each of these can require different modifications to your build, so it would be good to know how you see it.

Also how set are you on going dualwield?

Problem with dual wield is you lose a lot of defense and the DPS gain is not spectacular IMO. It can still work but puts pressure on life, res, gear and also limits block.

Endgame Ranger melee builds usually require block/dodge uniques to make them work well (because melee Rangers need to either stack dodge or stack block, or both), so going dualwield will put some constraints on what kind of gear you can use.

On top of that they need a solid chest like Kintsugi / Lightning Coil / Daresso / BofR, or Kaom's if 2h sword.

If you really want to do dualwield it could work, but I think you would get better mileage by going:
1) 1H dagger/sword + shield and combining block with dodge
2) 2H sword + Kaom's build focused more on mitigation (grabs Acro, but paths into ECs and runs AA)

Thanks for the feedback! As a player who hasn't even made it to merciless yet... I think completing uber lab is a good first goal. In my skill tree at this point I'm pretty committed to dual wielding so I'll have to have to live with the shortcomings for now. I may drop the sword focus so I can try out Rigwald's Savagery or maybe Wings of Entropy to get the benefits of twohanded as well. I'm trying to pump up block as much as as I can and so far in a3 Cruel (not much of a measure I know) I'm doing alright with surviving. I guess the real test comes when I reach merciless.